Can We Know Anything for Sure About the World Around Us?
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Question of the Calendar month
How Can I Know Anything At All?
We offset this new column with the question which plausibly must be answered before we can answer any other question.
The following answers to this central philosophical question each win a random book. (The order of the answers is not significant.)
How can I know (perceive with certainty) annihilation at all?
My start triumphant reply is that I can't; gloriously confirmed by studies of philosophy, particularly of David Hume.
Without the possibility of cognition, I am left with belief: belief well-nigh all things, material or abstract. Belief about everything I chose to have as valid; that this table is real, what scientists tell me, ideas, religions, our amazing planet and its people. At that place is a beautiful democracy in unknowing.
Except I do have trouble with 'the existent world'. I cannot trust cloth objects to stay where I believe them to be (my pens for example), and I also accept difficulty with with the limitations of man-made systems like mathematics and logic. How is it that every mother is the best mother?
Of course, my dreamy beingness relies on the (false?) sense of reality most of us have. I admire people who tin can command things, make calculations, build aeroplanes... Their manipulations seem to work. How is this possible?
One reply could prevarication in William James' pragmatism: "If it is useful information technology is truthful", or Richard Rorty's variant: "Making and taking as true." But by assuming that objects are existent and making use of them, with positive results, are we thereby proving the reality of these objects? Possibly this is how I can know that the words in my head at least relate to something out in that location.
Annabel Greaves,
Chichester, Sussex.
For some, to 'know' is but to believe; only for those of us who cannot be doing with the idea of drip-fed revelation, in that location is the trouble of reconciling two seemingly irreconcilable notions. The first notion is that in the broadest sense we cannot know anything. This follows from the fact [fact? – Ed] that we have no fixed bespeak of reference, simply are locked within our own minds and ambiguous linguistic communication. Having no self-regulating authority or control, we are incapable of objectivity. Having sensory systems that are express and unreliable (a different gear up of senses would reveal a different world), and being in a land of continual change every bit observers of a changing universe, the possibility of knowledge-as-certainty seems slight.
I am farther aware that little of what I know has been discovered by myself, and have to have the hazzards of misinformation, mistranslation, expediency and prejudice, as well equally my personal limitations. I am as well aware that, in spite of their imperfections, by use of the diverse methods available to united states of america – logical reasoning, intuition, empirical study – there has accumulated a trunk of knowledge-equally-reliable-fact that does piece of work for us, that does go beyond the mundane, and that has the feeling of universality. The periodic table is a good example. And presumably H2O is HiiO anywhere in the universe. The system of wavelengths seems to give order to our ideas of light and other forms of energy; and there exists the beautiful mathematics of repeatable cosmic journeys.
So how do I bring these ideas together?
Nosotros seem to be the end consequence of a pocket-size organic phenomenon in an inorganic universe, having the feature of enlightened-mindedness. The 'bottom' creatures know things, simply we know that we know – or by and large that we don't! Nosotros take the facility for sustained curiosity, the mysterious ability to examine our own minds, and we have memory and the power to inherit instinctual cognition. But beyond all this we are able to discern harmony and harmonic systems. We can spot the accidental note, and are disturbed by discord.
Could it be that to the extent that our findings have harmony and resonance with the subject of our search, we tin say that we have knowledge of it – noesis defined as conclusion-without-delusion? Thus knowledge would exist recognisable to u.s.a. by absenteeism of dissonance in our ideas. This is heed working on the matter from which it was formed, having recognition of information technology, setting up a fragile continuum whose motions and dimensions increment with always-increasing recognition of its source.
S. R. Griffiths
Bridport, Dorset.
How practice nosotros gain cognition, including both empirical and a priori [not experience-based] forms of knowledge?
The about obvious starting signal of this discipline is to address the question in listen: 'How can I know anything at all?' To able to ask such a question requires that there is something to know. To be committed to unmitigated scepticism is to allow a contradiction to exist entertained: Asserting that noesis is not possible is stating implicitly that something can be known in the very deprival of the possibility of knowledge, ie asserting that scepticism is valid. It amounts to a self-refutation of one's position.
To know anything at all is to go through a procedure of a series of experiences which grow from an opinion, to a belief about it, and finally to justified noesis. One tin have an opinion that a particular event happened, but can't lay claim to certain cognition unless this noesis tin be justified. Every bit the event is tested, knowledge well-nigh it attains greater certainty. This is true in detail about empirical knowledge, where claims fabricated most certain events can indeed be tested.
A priori knowledge by its nature is not caused in the aforementioned style as empirical cognition. In this case, information technology is a matter of reasoning through an idea to establish its truthfulness. We observe that the lord's day is circular; but past the very definition of 'round' nosotros can come to the conclusion that circular objects have no sides: thus, objects that have sides cannot exist classified as circular. A priori knowledge tin can also exist used to reason out other truths that are not connected with observation at all.
Larry Behrendt
Ewing, NJ
Edward De Bono conjectured that art works were answers to questions asked by artists on an unconscious level, and that they later rationalised back to what the questions had been. I don't know if I've ever read a totally clear statement by an artist nearly what he or she idea they were doing, although I have read some intriguing texts. Therefore set out below is my rationalisation of why I suspect that one cannot ask the question posed. My rationalisation is written in standard 'art-speak', which is basically a rant mutual to the art world. Some may remember it inappropriate for a philosophy magazine.
I doubtable the question is a little like asking someone who has never seen a football match to deduce what the game is all about from no more than the sounds heard from outside the grounds. Furthermore, if I use a defunct idiot box set as a doorstop, where does this leave me in relation to John Logie Baird? I know, I know... we all utilise systems nosotros don't sympathize; but you plainly knew that before you posed the question. I am sure every theoretical physicist who has slipped downward the dorsum of reality into the speculative world of 'what if' knows that what can be assuredly known tin exist written on the back of a fag parcel, even leaving room for the health alarm – and that is:it is all moving. Subsequently that it is all conjecture. Phrases similar 'event horizon' or 'singularity' add an exotic perfume to the cosmic state of affairs, but they cannot change the fact that we are a load of drunks who accept woken up on a train not knowing where we got on or where we are going. In the meantime the more sober of u.s.a. have worked out something of the operation of the organization, merely we nevertheless don't know the origin or destination.
And so what have we got? Well, we've got now. And at present consists of 3 elements: the evident substance of the cloth universe, photographs and other memorabilia, and memory. All are subject to deterioration; all reintroduce the past into the present; and all are subject field to the interactive effect of deterioration and reintroduction. Retentiveness in particular is the most vulnerable considering it is a biological organisation and therefore less stable than for instance, a photograph. Photography however, although beingness less apparently vulnerable, is subject to developing technology and the prevailing perceptions inside that technology. It is easy to engagement photographs within a reasonable span of fourth dimension. Photography, unlike memory, is external to the cocky and therefore is as well part of the substance of the fabric world.
All three elements are essentially fragile in that they are 'sand castles', subject to the ravages of time. None of them will hold their form beyond a very limited period, and they will so exist field of study to the vicissitudes of historical interpretation.
John Kaine
Camden, London
If the question bothers me enough to want to reply it, then I already have a certain level of mental composure (cogito ergo hebes not sum [I think therefore I'm non deadening]). The probability of a simple world producing sophisticated thinkers is vanishingly small. So the globe is complicated. A beingness that is sophisticated enough to remember well-nigh these things will exist delicate plenty to need a proficient idea of what is going on in social club to survive in a complicated globe (thermodynamics). At present, either this thinking and beingness is independent of the concrete earth or it is not. If it is independent, then Descartes' route to knowledge is bachelor, ie pure reason. But people who worry almost whether they tin can know anything can simply exist in a world in which they can at to the lowest degree accept true behavior (an 'anthropic principle of epistemology'), But knowledge of the earth relies on successful interaction with the physical world. The extra ingredient to requite noesis may be a rational account (Plato toyed with this), justification (lots of people's view until Gettier's 1963 challenge) or tracking (Nozick). Unforetunately, philosophers can generate rational accounts and justifications to order. They can also argue their way circular Nozick's tracking test. Then we philosophers have the stone by which true belief may be transmuted into knowledge, but it is unreliable. Finally, if the physical world does not exist then I did not read the question in Philosophy At present.
Richard Businesswoman
London
Descartes idea he had a definite certainty in the cogito – what could be more certain than the existence of the self? Others questioned this, and Ayer watered it down to 'there is a thought now' to avoid presupposing the 'I'. Does this non, notwithstanding, as well presuppose the 'in that location', 'idea' and 'now'? In truth, all we can have certainty of is that at that place is something. We are constantly bombarded with the certainty that something exists. With every glance, sniff or touch nosotros are obviously and indubitably aware of the existence of something – indeed the fact is forced upon u.s.. In the Oxford English Lexicon, 'Something' is divers as 'an unspecified thing' and 'Anything' is defined as 'a thing of whatever kind'. If someone asked for 'an unspecified book' then they have also asked for 'a volume of whatever kind'. If y'all had to relay the request, you could substitute one phrase for the other without the person beingness disappointed by the eventual choice of volume. Generally, an unspecified thing is a thing with no specified type or kind, and thus could be said to exist a affair of any kind – ie, annihilation. Therefore something and anything are logically equivalent. And then, if the beingness of something is certain, and so the being of annihilation is too certain, and therefore we tin know that at that place is anything as long as information technology is non nothing – even if we do not know what anything is. [Aargh! – Ed]
Joshua Monahan
Rowlands Castle, Hants
The only way I can know anything is by the noesis given to me by someone or something else. This can happen past learning from my parents, my society, everything I come into contact with from the mean solar day I was born until the day I dice.
This is why two human beings who live in a completely different part of the earth similar the Usa and a remote village in Africa have completely dissimilar knowledge almost everything and anything. If I spend all my life lonely in an empty room with no windows and no doors I will have no knowledge at all, from non knowing how to walk to non knowing that 2+2=4. All the knowledge that we have was giving to united states of america by someone else. Therefore our cognition can never be truly objective.
Is information technology no coincidence that we are all become our parents. [How did the showtime person know anything? – Ed.]
Maia Akiva
Los Angeles, CA
People never know things, they just subscribe to hypotheses with more than or less delivery.
Someone of a discursive temperament who enjoys exact frolics might respond, "Just surely you know that you exist?" I subscribe strongly to the theory that there is indeed someone typing this, simply this theory is conceivably erroneous. It would seem that to assert that x exists is to subscribe to a theory involving ten. Given the possibility that I am a Martian Sandmole dreaming this while in my couch, I have to ask what precisely the x could or must be that is experiencing. For any possible x in that location volition be some caste of commitment to it as being the correct value. Not much commitment in nearly cases.
If the idle fellow were to say "Merely yous have to let that there is something doing the subscribing to the theory," and then I should reply that I am familiar with the usual rules of grammer, and that indeed I accept it to exist tautologous that a subscription must have a subscriber. But this is simply a statement about how linguistic communication is conventionally used. In saying that I know that 2+2=4, what I hateful is that I am familiar with the usual rules governing the employ of the symbols. So although I am of the view that if at that place is a subscription to a hypothesis so there must be something doing the subscribing, I could exist incorrect nigh that; my grasp of linguistic communication usage might be obsolete, or but plain false.
Given the caste of delivery suggested by the word 'know', it should be reserved exclusively for utilise by the insane.
Mike Alder
Western Australia
If you are to correctly claim to have noesis about something, that knowledge must:
a) Exist correct
b) Take been reached using a correct method (it can't be a coincidence that you're right).
The offset obstacle to achieving noesis is therefore that any information we receive though our imperfect senses could give an imperfect portrayal of the external world (see a). Secondly, our imperfect brains could process information incorrectly (see b). Therefore, a sufferer of schizophrenia might believe the 'imaginary' people he sees are existent, or accept a retentiveness of something that never happened, and we also may have faux perceptions of the external world, and even our own personal pasts. However, even the schizophrenic knows how things look and feel and sound and smell and taste to them. Like everyone, he has knowledge of his nowadays sensations, his memories and his ideas. We are undoubtedly correct to say that we have knowledge of these things, because their reality doesn't require existence of anything exterior of the listen.
So, even though I can't be sure that my perceptions give me a true movie of the external world, I exercise know what 'the earth to me' is like. After that betoken, I don't think information technology's noesis that is of import, but reason. Reason allows us to have those bare bones of true knowledge and determine what they suggest almost the world and how we should live in information technology.
Philosophy means 'love of wisdom'. In Plato's Republic, this is often referred to as 'dearest of noesis', just I think this is incorrect. Whilst cognition has it'southward own small (but crucial) office in achieving wisdom and understanding, it is really reason that does the hard piece of work to decide how nosotros alive our lives.
Then again, I don't know that.
Sally Murray
Lancaster
Are any of these answers correct? Why/Why not?
Apologies to whatever whose answers came in also late to be considered.
Next Question of the Calendar month
The next question is: What Is The Meaning Of Life? (Note: not What Is The Meaning Of 'Life'?) Answers should be less than 400 words. Points will exist awarded for clarity, a skilful argument, significance, insight, originality and readability. Qualifications are not relevant, merely thoughtfulness is. Subject lines or envelopes should be marked 'Question Of The Month'. Printed answers will receive a book chosen by the editor, and so include your address. You will be edited.
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Source: https://philosophynow.org/issues/57/How_Can_I_Know_Anything_At_All
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